Ninette Rincon
Meskerem Johnson
Catherine Michaelis

Artist Statement for Bitchin’ in the Kitchen

We share our cultural foods, stories, and struggles with our community. As individuals we decolonize ourselves by finding our roots, and sharing what we learn with our community. We create a safe space so we can continue on our healing journeys to strengthen and better ourselves, and our communities.

Over several lunches we talked about our relationships to food, family, and culture, and then realized we could create our video in the same way – sharing food and talking about cultural connections to what we eat.

Our script adaptations radically changed from our original essays, as we created internal dialogues about food and our cultures. We became performative and reflexive in front of the camera, then we edited our footage and audio together. We played with vertical montage to reflect the ways in which we can’t always express how we feel. We altered opacity and film speed to show how time and space alter when we’re together with friends.

Most challenging was the time limit and the learning curve with Premiere Pro.